This will just be a quick post...just finishing off some Chinese wine with my french friend here checking our internet then going out for street dumplings and noodles!
Climbed Fansipan...Wow. LOL I have too many stories for here, including where we slept on the mountain, the climb, the scenery, drinking too much rice wine and "happy water" aka Vietnamese rice wine (pronounced "SZee-Ow") with the guides and later a group of vietnamese students who embraced me into thier group... Ask me for pics sometime and I will take you through the 3 days, 2 nights. Quickly, some things I learned: 1) the top of a mountiain is very windy 2) vietnamese drink a lot 3) your body will not let you fall asleep if you are really cold 4) it is possible to climb a mountain in hiking boots (others), nikes (me), jelly sandles (porter), wellington rain boots (my guide) and bare feet (village women)
Crossing the border into China was pretty chill, just walking across a bridge from Vietnam, but it took forever because border security literally pulled everything out of all of my bags...looked through all my books, opened and smelled my shampoo, read my travel diary even! Looking for drugs???? A "free tibet" flag? After that, customs tore apart my carry-on, asking if I was carrying any books with me. I think they were looking for my lonely planet china (I hid it in my big bag because I read they confiscate them). Apparently because of the way they lay out the maps (taiwen is in a different colour or something) it is illegal to bring into china!
Missed the early local bus to Kunming from Hekou, so hopped on the local 1pm bus that got me into Kunming at 2am. I would have preferred the sleeper bus, but i didnt have enough cash for the ticket. Turns out my debit and credit cards didnt work in any of the banks in Hekou! I had barely enough money from exchanging my VDN at the border to get the bus ticket with enough to get a bed in a hostel dorm for the night in Kunming....not for food or anything else. So after booking into the hostel I had literally ZERO cash. No money. Nothing. In China. Totally fucked. I didnt sleep that night trying to make a plan...I was going to try my cards again the next morning in every bank in Kunming, and if they didnt work, book a flight back to Thailand from Kunming for that day, attempting to use my credit card on the last day before it expired (april 1)! Luckily the next morning my card ended up working no problem in the bank of china...the same freakin bank it was rejected in in Hekou! What a scare! I went out for a BIG breakfast and now am travelling with LOTS of cash :)
So yeah, aside from arriving in a strange city with no money in the middle of the night, the bus ride was ehhhh...long. Lots of people spit on the bus...not used to that. And smoking. But the scenery was BEATIFUL...all through rice fields and small villages. At a break for dinner I chatted with the only other white person on the bus, a nice guy from France living in Montreal. He bought me some food after finding out my cash problem and we found a hostel together when arriving in Kunming. We walked around exploring the city today....which is seriously a real city! SO different that Vietnam!! Everything is BIG and neon! There is a walmart (the bus passed it...havent found it), mcdonalds, KFC, pizza hut...
Tomorrow Im heading to Dali, then the rough plan is going to Lijiang, tiger leaping gorge then Shangri-la. Id also like to head to Dequin, a tibetian town close to the border, but we'll see....
Im travelling super slow now...planning on spending at least 3-4 days in each place...tired of just jumping from city to city... Man, I am really looking forward to just chilling with Tibetan monks in the moutains :)
K...finished my Medicy wine and going to get some food!
xoxo
Anna
